Getting There

Throughout the long journey to learn Motif there are many useful sources of reference that could ease the burden. In recent years the Internet  and the World Wide Web (WWW)   has established itself as a very useful source for a variety of information types. X/Motif is no exception and the major distributors of X/Motif have WWW, email and ftp address. Many sites also contain frequently asked questions about general and specific X/Motif queries. News updates on major and minor release of X/Motif and tutorial material is also plentiful. This Chapter provides pointers to large repositories of such information in a variety of Internet and WWW distribution mediums.

Motif distribution

Various components of X/Motif are distributed by the OSF, the X Consortium, the Open Group and by a number of independent vendors for a variety of platforms. Section 1.6.1 gives details on these matters.

WWW and Ftp Access

    

The main WWW source of information for motif is MW3: Motif on the World Wide Web (URL: http://www.cen.com/mw3/). From the home page you can connect to a wealth of resources for Motif and X Window System development. MW3 presently contains over 700 links. Virtually all aspects of Motif are covered here.

Other useful WWW links include:

• http://www.rahul.net/kenton/xsites -- Good source of X information and links to many related sites.
• http://www.landfield.com/faqs/faqsearch.html -- The best frequently asked questions (FAQ) search interface (Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive).
• X, Xt and Motif FAQ are also archived at:
  • Utrecht University ( http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/),
  • Oxford University ( http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/internet/news/faq/),
  • SUNSite Northern Europe ( http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/usenet-by-hierarchy/comp/windows/x/).

The Motif FAQ is available via ftp also at:

• Century Computing Inc, USA -- The file is available in raw text and compressed formats: ftp://ftp.cen.com/pub/Motif-FAQ,
  ftp://ftp.cen.com/pub/Motif-FAQ.Z and ftp://ftp.cen.com/pub/Motif-FAQ.gz.
• MIT -- The Motif FAQ is available in 9 parts: ftp:// rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/comp.windows.x.motif.
• X Consortium -- ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/faqs/Motif-FAQ.

Things to take

Other sources of information on the Internet  are provided via mailing lists and news groups. Mailing lists are sent via email and serve as discussion groups and avenues for news announcements for particular topics. News groups can be read by specific news reader applications and broadly serve as discussion groups. Mailing lists and news groups do not necesarily require a WWW browser for reading although browsers such as Netscape Navigator do provide specific access to news groups and email.

Mailing lists

The following public mailing lists are maintained by the X Consortium for the discussion of issues relating to the X Window System. All are hosted @x.org.

xpert

A mailing list that discuses many X related issues. This list is gatewayed to the newsgroup comp.windows.x (see below).

To subscribe to this mailing list, send mail to the request address. In general this is specified by adding -request to the name of the desired list. Thus, to add yourself to the xpert mailing list:

        To: xpert-request@x.org
        Subject: (none needed)

        subscribe

To unsubscribe:

        To: xpert-request@x.org
        Subject: (none needed)

        unsubscribe

To add an address to a specific list, or to add a specific user, you can specify options to the subscribe or unsubscribe command. This example adds dave@widget.uk to the xpert mailing list:

        To: xpert-request@x.org
        Subject: (none needed)

        subscribe xpert dave@widget.uk

xannounce

This is a moderated mailing list for announcing releases of non-commercial X related software, and other issues concerning the X Window System.

This mailing list is gatewayed to the newsgroup comp.windows.x.announce.

Subscription requests should be sent to xannounce-request@x.org.

News groups

The news group comp.windows.x.motif is the main news group for Motif related issues. The following news groups exist for the discussion of other issues related to the X Window System:

comp.windows.x

-- This news group is gatewayed to the xpert mailing list (see above).

comp.windows.x.announce

This group is moderated by the staff of X Consortium, Inc. Traffic is limited to major X announcements, such as X Consortium standards, new releases, patch releases, toolkit releases and X conferences, exhibitions, or meetings.

comp.windows.x.apps

-- This news group is concerned with X applications.

comp.windows.x.intrinsics

-- This news group is concerned with Xt toolkit.

comp.windows.x.pex

-- This news group is concerned with the 3D graphics extension to X.

alt.windows.cde

-- The news group dedicated to Common Desktop Environment issues.

Most of the above news groups have a frequently asked question section posted regularly to the news group which provide valuable information for the novice and discuss common problems. The comp.windows.x.motif are also accessible from many of the WWW sites listed in Section 21.3.2